NCSEA’s 2016 Accomplishments

As 2016 comes to a close, we reflect on a year filled with much uncertainty. This is not a new concept to us – but neither is resiliency. Thanks to your support of NCSEA, everyone in North Carolina breathes cleaner air and lives a little better. Your giving has helped grow the clean energy economy, reduced energy bills for everyone, and equipped us to be the best champions of clean energy we have ever been.

In recognition of this progress, NCSEA is pleased to share with our top ten accomplishments from this year. Without your support, this list could not exist.

2016 Top Ten Accomplishments

10 Years Strong and Growing: Thanks in part to the hard work of NCSEA members and staff throughout 2016, North Carolina’s clean energy industry experienced its 10th consecutive year of industry growth with 26,154 jobs and $6.96 billion in annual clean energy industry revenues. Watch for our 2016 Clean Energy Industry Census results in January.

Defining Problems and Advancing Solutions: NCSEA convened representatives from the energy storage, customer-owned and large-scale solar, wind, bioenergy, and geothermal sectors to participate in ongoing “working group” discussions about the current state of the industry, policy, and pathways forward for affordable clean energy in North Carolina.

Seeing Ourselves in Clean Energy: In 2016, NCSEA launched ‘The Story of Clean Energy’ campaign, telling the many and diverse clean energy stories of North Carolinians across our great state. There are many more stories to be told in 2017, and we encourage you to help us tell them through our new communications hub, also launched this year.

Legal and Finance Education: NCSEA helped lead a collaborative effort with some of North Carolina’s most experienced utility legal experts to create a utilities law specialization within the North Carolina State Bar, and two of NCSEA’s attorneys were among the inaugural class of specialists. In addition, NCSEA’s second annual Continuing Legal Education event on renewable energy law and clean energy finance event for accounting CPE credit each received high marks from attendees from across the Southeast.

Legislative Support for Clean Energy: NCSEA’s work connects state and local decision-makers with the clean energy workers, investors, business leaders and resources in their communities and beyond. In 2016, our state’s leaders worked with NCSEA to successfully prevent all harmful policy proposals from becoming law and began exploring positive policy options for 2017.

Inclusiveness Initiative: NCSEA launched our new Inclusiveness Initiative, to ensure the work of NCSEA and our members is advancing opportunities for all North Carolinians to participate in and directly benefit from our clean energy economy.

Solar Leadership: While North Carolina has been a pioneer for decades in passive solar design and high-performance building, in 2016 we surpassed Arizona to become #2 in installed solar PV generating capacity with more than 2,000 MegaWatts of installed solar capacity – 53 MW of which is customer-owned rooftop solar.

Strong Team of Experienced Leaders: NCSEA added 52 additional years of direct career experience to our team, which quickly translated into increased collaboration, problem solving and impact with our members, partners, and stakeholders. NCSEA staff also completed our fourth year as a lab team participant in the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Electricity Innovations Laboratory, known as e–Lab.

Utility Solutions Program at the Leading Edge: NCSEA designed and launched our innovative new Utility Program. We have started working with several North Carolina utilities to test new data-driven approaches to identify clean energy and business model options that can be beneficial for both utilities and their customers.